


take this burden away from me (and bury it before it buries me)

by iskra (kiira)



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Gen, self harm cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiira/pseuds/iskra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and all you can see is dark. it's dark and you're not sure if laura's in the coffin or if you're both in Hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take this burden away from me (and bury it before it buries me)

You never tell her the bone deep terror, the shaking, trembling, screaming, suffocating terror of those decades, centuries, millennia of night. Not of the months, years you spent tearing at your own flesh, slicing long-dead veins in desperate hope that your dead body still held a drop of life.

Not of dirt under your nails, and splinters in your palms, and of the all-consuming terror when you Awoke, when you feared that you had died in the coffin below the earth, and now were clawing your way into Hell.

She's so small and naïve and _pure_ , and you could never smother her underneath your centuries of horror, of pain, of sin.

\--

Sometimes ( _always_ ) when you sleep, you find that you wake up in the coffin, desperate and dead. Sometimes you lie there and scream and wonder if Laura is the dream, a delusion of comfort. Sometimes you dig gorges into your arms with your fingernails, because if you can feel _pain_ this is the truth. 

Sometimes you cry.

You wake up tangled in a dead girl's sheets, in a dead girl's bed with the taste of dirt in your mouth.

(Sometimes you stumble to the bathroom and claw into your shoulders, because if there are marks, if there is pain, maybe this is the truth.)

\--

It's December third, and you find Laura drunk in your bed. She's crying, or was crying, or is in the hiccuping, helpless stage between the two. You can't really tell.

You sit on the end of your bed, curled between the wall and Laura's feet, and pretend to read your book, waiting for Laura's silence.

Even when you were a real eighteen-year-old, with sisters and friends and cousins, you were never good at feelings. They always felt too heavy, too horribly serious, but you lay your hand on Laura's hip, and "Do you want to talk about it?"

The words seem fake in your mouth, something out of the movies Laura watches when she thinks you're asleep, and you consider snatching your hand back and leaving.

Laura looks at you, eyes red and she whispers something about a car accident and her mother and you stay, because death is the one thing you're good at.

"We were... we were gonna go to the movies together and... and ...." She trails off and her eyes are lost, remembering something you have no right to know, and then she sits up and crawls across the bed, collapsing in your lap.

"I found your wine," she mumbles into your thigh, and you twist her hair around your fingers. It had been so long, _so long_ , since you touched someone just to touch, not to fuck or kill or seduce, so long since someone trusted you for comfort and you want to warn Laura of all the things you've done, warn her that you're too fucked up for this gentleness.

Instead, you cry.

\--

Laura wakes you up. Her hand is cold and soft and _wrong_ because you're dead, you're dead and Laura should be warm.

"You were screaming," she whispers, and all you can see is dark. It's dark and you're not sure if Laura's in the coffin or if you're both in Hell.

\--

She's asked you hundreds of times for stories, and you tell her the sweet ones, the ones where the hero wins, ones where you saved people and kissed pretty girls and danced.

You tell her about your family, the one you had before you died, about your little sisters and never, never, _never_ about how their blood painted the wall of their nursery after Mother ripped open their necks.

But tonight, you're both drunk and Laura whispers to you, "What's it like to die?" and you don't know what to say.

She's silent, waiting, and you're silent, lost.

"Cold," you decide. "Cold, and like you're falling off the Earth. Helpless."

"Oh." Laura whispers into your neck, and she's kissing you and you don't know why. You kiss back, hands moving in a remembered dance, and she mumbles into your mouth, "I'm sorry."

You swallow her words, and they taste like dirt.


End file.
